On 07/04/2011 02:04 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote: > Ralf Corsepius writes: > >> On 07/04/2011 01:18 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote: >> >> > Both gcc and binutils are extensively regression-tested. Stuff that was >> > compiled years ago, still works. >> To some extend, yes, >> >> Nevertheless we all are permanently fixing gcc/binutils-compatibilities, >> aren't we? > > Right. But the same cannot be said for autotools. The macros change, Very rarely > and > configure scripts are expected to be updated to reflect the changes. To some extend agreed. There were few such changes, but there were much more which didn't. >> > The same cannot be said of autotools. >> Well, check the sources - autoconf+automake have similar testsuites. > > Perhaps, but they would not be testing that ten-year old code still gets > processed, without warnings. > > I've got C++ code that's more than ten years old. Still builds just > fine, without any diagnostics. Then you're lucky - May-be your C++ code is recent enough? So far, most pre-ISO-C++ code I have encountered, esp. when originating from non-gnu platforms has required major surgery ;) Worse, "advanced c++ code" often even requires surgery between g++ releases (Much of my own works is based on C++) ;) > Try feeding an average ten-year old configure.in script to autoconf, and > see what happens. With pre-autoconf-2.49: "Poof" in most cases. As with most pre-iso/ANSI-C++ code ;) With post-autoconf-2.49: "minor issues" in most cases. >> It's the same problem as with binutils/gcc: languages change, standards >> change, incompatibilities are being introduced deliberately, bugs find >> their ways in, old features get abandoned/new ones introduced etc. >> >> The real difference between the autotools and gcc is: Many people are >> permanently modernizing their c/c++-code, but are expecting modern >> autotools to support the bugs/non-documented features the autotools did >> 10-15 years ago. > > Not really. Like I said, I have lots of code that, so far, didn't need > any modernizing. As I wrote above - lucky you! > But I do recall an update to autoconf, a few releases ago, that I had to > respond to, with some fixes to my configure scripts. Likely the autoconf-2.13->autoconf-2.49 change ca. 10 years ago - It was incompatible in many cases. Most other upgrades since then (10 years ago!!!), had been fairly harmless - An aspect why "autoreconf"/"autoupdate" in recent enough autotools-based configuration at least "appears to work" in most cases. Ralf -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
